fortresssagafandomcom-20200214-history
Romulus
"Enjoy these moments. If you are afraid, then feel that fear. If you are worried, feel that anxiety. These are your last moments among the living...never forget them. I was asleep when it happened to me...I had my life robbed from me...I give you the chance to experience yours one last time." The Vampire Romulus '''(August 11, 22 Pre-FVW - September 2nd, 8 Pre-FVW) is the Prince of the Vampires that dwell in the Castille del Nosferatu in Spain. He is a disciple of the Cult of Queen Leonora, and as such has great respect for Queen Michaela and Rags. He acknowledges himself as the "father" and sire of Ellesa and Mildread, but he is also the sire of Silmeria Valkyrie. Biography The Life and Death of Nathan Prince Before the Vampire Romulus there was '''Nathan David Prince, the fourteen year old son of Timothy and Eileen Prince. Both Timothy and Eileen were very wealthy, Timothy being a respected lawyer who did not marry until late in life, devoting his life to his career, and Eileen being the young heiress to a large family-owned business. They met at a Christmas party for Eileen's parents' business, Timothy representing the business in a lawsuit at the time, and were married soon after. Eileen was 22 at the time of their marriage, and Timothy was 40 - eighteen years her senior. Though both had wealth, Nathan's parents were extremely conservative and didn't use it to give their son the life he deserved. They often neglected him as well, as Timothy had spent his whole life focusing only on his career and did not take well to having to change that, and Eileen was young and attending graduate school in hopes of taking over her family's business. Nathan's childhood was spent at the finest preparatory schools, on the surface an attempt to give their son an excellent education but in truth an attempt to keep their responsibilities as parents far away from them. Nathan was a quiet, introverted boy until the age of 9, when, at the insistence of one of his teachers, he took up a love for the theatrical. Though his teachers and peers considered him an excellent actor, his parents forbade him from pursuing it, considering the idea of having an artist for a son an embarrassment. This being taken from him, Nathan quickly returned to introversion. He continued to fail out of the classes they had hand-picked for him, however, being an extremely poor student who rarely participated in any class other than history - of which the history of Rome was always his favorite - and Nathan feared the months when he would be home, in which his mother would cry and his father would yell at him and call him an 'anathema' and a shame upon the family. He didn't have any friends at home, and his friends at school were all theatrical people who he could no longer associate with, so most of his time was spent alone. When he was 12, Nathan's parents had a daughter, Helen. Nathan's sister was his parents' pride and joy from the moment she was born, believing her to be everything Nathan failed to be in their eyes. Nathan loved his sister as well, as despite the fact that she was an infant and could not say a word, she was the friend and companion he had long hoped for. She was somebody else to suffer alongside him. He spent as much of the two remaining years of his life with her, and her presence made him much more confident. He began to rebel against his parents more, choosing to grow his hair out until it was thick and uncombed like a mane. It is hard to say what called a Vampire to the house of the Princes, and that vampire is no longer able to say. When Nathan had been 14 for a little under a month, a vampiress by the name of Yoru Tsuki came to Nathan's house and hovered over him while he slumbered. As he dreamed, she drank his blood, and then Nathan Prince was no more. Miguel Angeles For as mysterious a reason as brought Tsuki to Nathan in the first place, she gave him another life. When he awoke from his sleep, his skin had grown deathly white and thick across his bones. His eyes, too, had become closer to the color of the vampire's who had changed him - a pale silver. The only thing that had remained of his mortal form was his thick, dark hair - which now seemed even more unruly than when he had been alive. Nathan's first moments in the world of the dead was listening to his sire laughing and watching the darkness of his room blurring and becoming clearer at the same time, as the invisible become visible. Tsuki revealed to him that he was a vampire, destined to flee from the sun and feast upon the blood of mortals for all eternity or else be destroyed by the morning's light, and then vanished. Being newborn, hungry, and afraid, Nathan fled as well, though he did not know to where. For many nights, Nathan hid from the sun in holes of dirt that he had dug himself with his bare hands. He had found his nails had become bitter sharp since his death and able to dig through the soft earth like tiny shovels. His parents had lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Nathan had hoped to go to the city, where there might be more of his kind. But Nathan had no money to hide himself in a less muddy place along the way - not thinking to steal from his parents before he had left, and fearing to go back - and he was also growing very hungry. He did not like the idea at all of killing people, or drinking people's blood. But as the nights drew on, he felt his "fear" slipping into a mere instinctual drive, and all his emotions began to drain away. Despite all of his doubts, the only thing that never crossed his mind was that he wasn't dead. He knew from the moment he opened his eyes the night that Tsuki had sired him that he was no longer alive. His desire for food culminated when he finally reached the city. A muddy, rabid looking fourteen year old boy with unearthly silver eyes, he forced a college student into an alleyway and drained her of all her blood, stealing her life away viciously. Though he felt fresh and reinvigorated, Nathan did not take well to this. He had killed a woman, and though all of his body had told him he had committed a terrible sin, he could not muster any guilt or shame - it had all been stripped from him with his life. The emotions that came felt fake, and though many other vampires dealt with the fake emotions and tried to believe they were real, Nathan knew he could not truly feel any remorse for having murdered the woman. People on the street saw the woman vanish into the alley and came to see what became of her, but when they arrived she (and Nathan) had gone. But it wasn't just mortals who had seen Nathan feed. As Nathan moved through the back alleys with the woman's corpse slung over his shoulder, he was cornered by a vampire by the name of Miguel Angeles. Miguel had been tracking Nathan for some time, having come across him several miles outside of Philadelphia, but did not intend to reveal himself to the newborn vampire until he was either in severe danger or had fed for the first time. The vampire expressed sympathy - or whatever sympathy the undead could muster - for Nathan's lack of a sire, and offered to fill that role for him. The boy gratefully agreed, and the two quickly became close. Miguel was five centuries old. "Miguel" was not even his real name - what his real name was, none can say. He claimed that he was once a soldier of the Spanish Conquistador Cortez, and that he was captured by the Aztecs and sacrificed to their Blood God, Tezcatlipoca, whose priests were in reality vampires. They embraced him into the world of the night, and he was used to slaughter his own countrymen from within. Miguel also claimed that he then used this trust that he had garnered with his sires to kill them all as they laid down to slumber, and thus allowed the Spanish to fight the (comparatively weaker) Aztecs without any supernatural assistance. He shared very little of his past other than that. Miguel taught Nathan what it was to be a vampire - a theory of being a new Ein Sof, an Unmoved Mover, a God - and that killing humans was just as bad as humans killing animals, and that those vampires who chose to drink animal blood in place of human blood so as to feel morally superior were hypocritical at best and worth being destroyed at worst. The strongest vampires learned early that blood was power, and power is one of the few things vampires could still comprehend completely. Nathan and Miguel spent two years in each other's company, staying in Philadelphia, until Nathan suggested that they move to New York City. Miguel agreed, though it would be to his doom. "Romulus" Miguel hadn't just been tracking Nathan since he "randomly came across him." Miguel and Yoru Tsuki were old enemies, with Tsuki claiming that Miguel had gone to her homeland of Japan a hundred years after his siring. Why he was there, neither said, though Miguel had ended up driving a wooden sword through Tsuki's sire's heart and left him for the sun. Tsuki swore on her sire's ashes for revenge, and the two had chased one another in a brutal dance throughout the centuries. Miguel's tutelage of Nathan was a return to his own roots, hoping to use the newborn against his sire. It is possible that Tsuki had expected this, however, in hopes of drawing Miguel and the boy both out. Whatever moves had been played, Tsuki was in New York when Miguel and Nathan arrived.